The Beauty of Darkness (6 page)

“They got hold of some our horses is all,” Griz said.

Or someone else had caught up with them.

I stood, my gaze following the tracks that disappeared through the pines ahead. They headed east, which meant they weren't being taken back to Venda. How did they get Vendan horses?

I shook my head.

Rafts. Stashed horses and supplies.

This was a plan that had been long in the making. Maybe from the moment Lia set foot in Venda. The only conclusion I could draw was that she had used me from the beginning. Every tender word from her lips had served a purpose. I shuffled through them all. Our last night, when she told me her vision was of us together … when she asked me about my mother—

It turned my stomach inside out. Lia was the only person I had ever even whispered my mother's name to.
I see your mother, Kaden. I see her in you every day.
But now I knew all she saw when she looked at me was one of them. Another barbarian, and someone she couldn't trust. Even if she had deceived me, I couldn't believe that her affections for the people were anything but real. That much wasn't an act. It churned in me, the memory of Lia standing on a wall, sacrificing precious seconds of her escape so she could speak to the people one last time.

We checked inside the cave and found dark stains in the sandy soil, possibly blood from a slain animal—or maybe from one of their own wounds. And then I saw a scrap of fabric no bigger than my thumbnail. I picked it up. Red brocade. It was a piece of her dress—confirmation that she had made it this far. If she was able to ride, it meant she was still alive. It was a possibility neither Griz nor I had brought up. No one had found a body downstream, but that didn't mean a rocky crag hadn't hidden it from view.

“They're not far ahead,” I said.

“Then what are we waiting for?”

Find her.

There was no time to waste.

I looked at Griz. What real good was he going to do me? He could barely lift a sword, even with his good arm, and I'd be able to move faster without him.

“You can't hold them off by yourself,” he said as if reading my mind.

It appeared that was exactly what I'd have to do. But Griz was at least still an intimidating figure. He could make a show of force. It might be all the edge I needed.

 

CHAPTE
R
TE
N

I stepped out of the grotto and looked out on the landscape. The beauty of trees dressed in glittering white robes, and a world as quiet and holy as a Sacrista met me—except for a gentle wordless whisper that wove through the tree tops.
Shhh.

The last few days had finally given me the time with Rafe I had once prayed for when we were trapped on the other side of the river. Of course, with an escort of four, we were never alone, so our affections were kept in check, but at least we had time to ride beside each other.

We talked of our childhoods and our roles in court. His role was far more purposeful than mine. I told him how I frustrated my aunt Cloris to distraction, never quite meeting her standards in the womanly arts. “What about your mother?” he asked.

My mother. I wasn't even sure how to answer him. She had become an enigma for me. “She shrugged off Aunt Cloris's admonishments,” I told him. “She said it was healthy for me to run and play with my brothers. She encouraged it.”

But then something changed. Where she had once sided with me against the Royal Scholar, she began to take his council; where she had never been short with me, she began to lose her temper.
Just do as I say, Arabella!
And then, almost apologetically, she would draw me into her arms and whisper with tears in her eyes,
Please. Just do as I say.
After I'd had my first cycle, I had run into her chamber to ask her about the gift that hadn't yet appeared. She was sitting by the fire with her stitchery. Her eyes had flashed with anger, and she missed a stitch, her needle drawing a bead of blood on her thumb and staining the piece she'd been working on for weeks. She stood and threw the whole thing into the fire.
It will come when it comes, Arabella. Don't be in such a hurry.
After that I only cautiously brought up the gift. I was ashamed, thinking she'd had a vision of my shortcomings. It hadn't occurred to me that she was the cause of them. “I think my mother is somehow part of all this, but I'm not sure how.”

“Part of what?”

Other than the kavah on my shoulder, I didn't know what to say. “She wanted to send me off to Dalbreck.”

“Only after my father proposed it. Remember, it was his idea.”

“She went along easily enough,” I said. “My signature on the contracts hadn't dried before she was calling for dressmakers.”

A flash of surprise suddenly brightened his face, and he laughed. “I forgot to tell you. I found your wedding gown.”

I stopped my horse. “You what?”

“I plucked it out of the brambles when I was tracking you down. It was torn and dirty, but it didn't take up much room, so I shoved it in my pack.”

“
My dress?
” I said in disbelief. “You still have it?”

“No, not here. It was too risky to carry around in Terravin. I was afraid someone would see it, so when I got the chance, I stuffed it behind a manger stored up in the loft. Enzo's probably found it and thrown it out by now.”

Berdi maybe, but not Enzo. He never did any more tidying up than he had to.

“Why in the gods' names would you keep it?” I asked.

A smile played behind his eyes. “I'm not really sure. Maybe I wanted something to burn in case I never caught up with you.” A disapproving brow shot up. “Or to strangle you with if I did.”

I suppressed a grin.

“Or maybe the dress made me wonder about the girl who had worn it,” he said. “The one brave enough to thumb her nose at two kingdoms.”

I laughed. “Brave? I'm afraid no one in my kingdom would see it that way, nor likely yours.”

“Then they're all wrong. You were brave, Lia. Trust me.” He started to lean over to kiss me, but was interrupted by the whinny of Jeb's horse not far behind us.

“I'm afraid we're holding everyone up,” I said.

He scowled, jerking his reins, and we moved on.

Brave enough to thumb her nose at two kingdoms.
I think that was how my brothers saw it too, but certainly not my parents—nor the cabinet.

“Rafe, have you ever wondered why I was the one who had to go to Dalbreck to secure the alliance? Couldn't it have been accomplished just as well by you coming to Morrighan? Why is it always the girl who must give up everything? My mother had to leave her homeland. Greta had to leave hers. Princess Hazelle of Eilandia was shipped off to Candora to create an alliance. Why can't a man adopt his wife's homeland?”

“I couldn't because I am going to rule Dalbreck one day. I can't do that from your kingdom.”

“You aren't king yet. Were your duties as a prince any more important than mine as a princess?”

“I'm also a soldier in Dalbreck's army.”

I remembered my mother's claim that I was a soldier in my father's army, an angle of duty she had never used before. “As I am in Morrighan's,” I said.

“Really,” he replied, his tone dubious. “You may have had to leave your homeland, but did you consider everything you would have gained as my queen?”

“Did you consider everything you might have gained as my king?”

“You were planning to depose your brothers?”

I sighed. “No. Walther would have made a fine king.”

He asked me about my brother, and I managed to talk about him without tears in my eyes for the first time, recalling his kindness, his patience, and all the ways he encouraged me. “He was the one who had taught me how to throw a knife. It was one of his last requests to me, that I keep up my practice.”

“Was that the same knife you used to kill the Komizar?”

“Yes. Fitting, don't you think? And after I stabbed him, I used it to kill Jorik. That's where I left it, stuck in the middle of his throat. It's probably for sale in the
jehendra
by now. Or Malich is wearing it at his side as a memento of his undying fondness for me.”

“You're so certain that Malich is the next Komizar?”

I shrugged. No, I wasn't certain, but of the Rahtan, he seemed the most ruthless and hungry for power—at least of those who were left alive. Worry burrowed through me. How had the people in the square fared, and what did they think when I disappeared? A part of me was still there.

“Tell me more about your kingdom,” I said, trying to banish my worst thoughts from my head. “Let's not waste one more word on vermin like Malich.”

Rafe stopped his horse again, then shot a warning glare over his shoulder at the others to keep their distance. His chest rose in a slow deep breath, and his pause made me sit higher in my saddle. “What is it?” I asked.

“When you were traveling across the Cam Lanteux … did any of them—did he
hurt
you?”

There it was. Finally.

I had wondered if it would ever come. Rafe had never asked me a single question about those months I was alone in the wilderness with my captors—what had happened, how I had lived, what they had done—and he'd avoided any mention of Kaden at all. It was as if a fire burned so brightly inside him, he couldn't allow himself to get too close to it.

“Which
he
are you referring to?”

His gaze faltered. “Malich,” he answered. “That's who we were talking about.”

No, not just Malich. Kaden always simmered beneath the surface. This was about him more than anyone else.

“My time crossing the Cam Lanteux was hard, Rafe. Most of the time I was hungry. All of the time I was afraid. But no one touched me. Not in the way you're thinking. You could have asked me long ago.”

His jaw twitched. “I was waiting for you to bring it up. I wasn't sure if it was too painful for you to talk about. All I had wanted was for you to survive so we could be together again.”

I grinned and kicked his boot with my own. “And we are together.”

*   *   *

At night, when we could find shelter that afforded some measure of comfort, I read aloud from the Last Testaments of Gaudrel. They all listened with fascination.

“It appears that Gaudrel was a vagabond,” Rafe said.

“But with no colorful wagon,” Jeb added.

“And none of those tasty sage cakes,” Orrin mused.

“It was soon after the devastation,” I told them. “She and the others were survivors just trying to find their way. I think Gaudrel may have been a witness and one of the original Ancients.”

“It's not much like Dalbreck history,” Sven said.

I realized I was largely ignorant of Dalbreck history. Since it was a kingdom that had sprung from Morrighan many centuries after it was established, I had assumed their view of history was the same as ours. It wasn't. While they acknowledged that Breck was an exiled prince of Morrighan, their account of the devastation and its aftermath was different, apparently melding with the stories of nomadic tribes who gave the fleeing prince safe passage to the mesa lands of the south.

It seemed I had stumbled upon yet another history that conflicted with the Holy Text of Morrighan. Dalbreck's account, at least as Sven told it, had a precise number to the Remnant—exactly one thousand chosen survivors. They spread to the four corners of the earth, but the strongest and most courageous headed south to what would one day become Dalbreck. Breck rallied them and laid the first stone of a kingdom that would become greater than all the others. From there it was all about heroes and battles and the growing might of a new kingdom favored by the gods.

The only things all of the histories did have in common was a surviving Remnant and a storm. A storm of epic proportions that laid waste to the land.

“I had warned Venda not to wander too far from the tribe,” I read aloud from Gaudrel's testament. “A hundred times, I had warned her. I was more her mother than her sister. She came years after the storm. She never felt the ground shake. Never saw the sun turn red. Never saw the sky go black. Never saw fire burst on the horizon and choke the air.”

I read a few more passages, then closed the book for the night, but the descriptions of the storm lingered, and I turned Gaudrel's account over silently in my mind. Where was the truth?
The ground shook, and fire burst on the horizon.
That was a truth Gaudrel had actually witnessed.

And that was what I had seen too.

When the Komizar showed me his army city, fire burst forth as the brezalots exploded, the ground shook, and the testing fields stained the sky with copper smoke, choking the horizon.

Seven stars.
Maybe all the destruction wasn't flung from the heavens.

Maybe there had been a dragon of many faces, even then.

 

CHAPTE
R
ELEVE
N

RAFE

Lia's question stuck with me.
Why in the gods' names would you keep it?

I had fumbled for answers because I didn't know myself. When I found the gown, I had cursed her repeatedly as I untangled it from the thorny branches.
I'm the crown prince of Dalbreck for the gods' sake. Why am I cleaning up after a spoiled runaway?
When I freed the gown and held it up, I was even angrier. I wasn't one to dwell on fabrics or fashion like Jeb, but even I could see its matchless beauty. Her complete disregard for the careful work that had gone into it only fueled my fury. But that still didn't explain why I went to the trouble to stuff it in my bag.

I knew now. It wasn't to burn it or wave it in her face. It was something I wouldn't even admit to myself at the time. It was the warrant for her arrest I had heard about. Her own father was hunting her down like she was an animal. I'd stuffed the dress in my bag because I knew eventually someone else would come. I didn't want one of them to find the dress—or her.